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Scratch that: Cats film to be 'resupplied' with 'improved visuals'
- skore 7y agoSince some people might pay again to see the "improved" version (after some of them likely saw the original version to see for themselves what all the screaming was about) - is this a film industry version of a DLC?
- yellow_lead 7y agoIt's interesting that producers still send physical copies to theaters.
- ekianjo 7y agoNot all, I believe. There are theaters that get movies thru digital transmission as well. How much it is widespread, however, I don't know. EDIT: https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2017/03/23/75-of-u-s-theaters-get-their-movies-delivered-by.html https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2017/03/23/75-of... 75% of cinemas in the US get their movies digitally distributed.
- danso 7y agoIncidentally, I tried to see the new Star Wars movie today. But the projector stopped working and the employees blamed it on a computer failure.
- yellow_lead 7y agoThat's cool. Thanks for the link and new information.
- sigsergv 7y agoThose are not exactly physical copies, theaters are getting special cases with hard-drives, microcontrollers and encryption. Every presentation is accounted when played.
- mroche 7y agoWhat the above comment is referring to is a DCP (Digital Cinema Package)[0]. However, not all locations/production houses are using the traditional DCP methodology. The Digital Cinema Distribution Coalition[1] has the goal of changing the distribution method to a satellite based digital download structure. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Cinema_Package https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Cinema_Package [1] https://www.dcdcdistribution.com/about-us/ https://www.dcdcdistribution.com/about-us/
- closeparen 7y agoWhy would you use satellites for this?
- reaperducer 7y agoLots of commercial data goes via satellite and not internet. That's why so many gas stations have uplinks on their roofs.
- closeparen 7y agoSure, but why? Isn’t that insanely expensive compared to cable/DSL and VPN?
- mschuster91 7y agoSheer data size, iirc a DCP runs in the 300-500GB range per movie. Probably a couple hours on a distribution satellite for an entire country's worth of cinema are cheaper than managing the logistics of physical HDDs.
- vasco 7y agoJust share it as a torrent to all movie theatres? They'll all seed each other.
- 7y ago
- kbos87 7y agoI wonder if Cats really deserved the fait it wrought. You have to wonder if it was universally seen to be terrible, or if a couple of early opinions led a wave of negative opinions. Tough to really know.
- clouddrover 7y ago> I wonder if Cats really deserved No need to wonder. See it for yourself and form your own opinion.
- echelon 7y agoOne can wonder without initiative. Perhaps the time or money necessary to satisfy the question is worth more than the answer.
- anonymfus 7y agoThe peak weirdness is probably this part: https://twitter.com/data_bayes/status/1209340322767081472 https://twitter.com/data_bayes/status/1209340322767081472
- SpaceManNabs 7y agoWhy is this so weird? Maybe I watch too many weird films...
- anonymfus 7y agoIt is not specifically weird, but it seems like public someway started to associate anthropomorphic animals with sexual fetishes, so when they see cat eating cockroach in that scene for example they think about vore fetish and so on.
- shantly 7y agoEven putting that aside, it's more the kind of thing you'd expect in an art film than something intended for general audiences, even assuming the film overall is good (or good at doing whatever it's trying to do) which does not seem to be a safe assumption in this case.
- isopede 7y agoWhen does this patch land? I was hoping to see the original in all its glory, but don't have time until later this week...
- ObsoleteNerd 7y agoI’m sure it’ll leak to torrents soon (if it hasn’t already). It’s too much of a meme-fest not to.
- Uehreka 7y agoThis reminds me of the interesting metaphysical argument that happened when Kanye released The Life of Pablo to streaming services and then tweeted “Imma fix Wolves”. To my knowledge, you have to really Google around to find the original version of the song Wolves today (it would probably be harder if Kanye had “fixed” it without announcing it first). Basically, what is “Cats (2019)”? Is it the thing people saw last weekend? The thing people will see next weekend? The further edited thing that shows up on streaming services in a few months? Or does “Cats” just refer to the idea of a motion-captured live adaptation of the book musical “Cats” that stars a certain group of people but takes many forms depending on when it was viewed?
- sp332 7y agoPeople don't have this kind of philosophical meltdown when shows are changed from one performance to the next on Broadway.
- akersten 7y agoThat's the expectation with live musicals and part of the reason why people go see them in the first place - it's a unique, evolving experience. Movies shouldn't be that way - they should have ISBN numbers or something - if you want to re-make it, you shouldn't just be able to erase the original. We're going to wind up in some terrible place where if you pre-order your movie ticket you can see the Target special edition of Avengers Endgame 8 that is only available in theaters for two weeks before it switches to some other version. Maybe we'll get to the point where movie theaters will just perpetually have the same film on roll and update it every couple of months with the latest patches like an MMO. Remember, your Avengers and Superman subscriptions are different. This sure makes me feel crotchety.
- shantly 7y agoI'm pretty sure highly-accurate audiovisual media are all tied up in fear of death at this point, in a way that a given live performance of something cannot be, so it bothers us when they're not eternal and unchanging, while live shows do not.
- 7y ago
- caymanjim 7y agoIt's silly of them to dump more money into this trainwreck. It's been savaged by every reviewer, and while some criticism has been directed at the "uncanny valley" CGI, most of the criticism has been about the story and characterizations.
- cameronfraser 7y agoThe only reason they are trying to "fix" it, is because they had so many big name people attached to it. Which, to be honest, I'm really confused about. The only reason I can think of is that it was based on a stage musical.
- onion2k 7y agoAnother reason might be that they were paid a lot of money.
- hinkley 7y agoI’m not even an actor and if someone said they wanted me to have a bit part “in a movie with Judy Dench” I’d be like yeah okay. Poor Idris. I want to love him but he’s in so, so many bad movies. You get a couple of names on board based on an early draft of the script, they took a chance on you or they had a moment of bad judgement. But your peers come on board because you did, and pretty soon you have an all star cast and... dreck. Then it seems like everyone remembers that star power can’t fix everything and it’s a while before the same thing happens again. Cats just seems to be this cycle’s cautionary tale.
- solarkraft 7y agoThis is exactly how the supposedly terrible film Movie 43 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie_43 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie_43) was made.
- autarch 7y agoThe director, Tom Hooper, has made better movies in the past, notably The King's Speech (big winner at the Oscars in its year) and Les Miserables (got at least decent reviews).
- nikanj 7y agoThis will, maybe, drive some people into the theatres to see the original.
- bo1024 7y agoThis could end up being a really interesting precedent in film (not in a way I like, personally). akersten writes farther down: > We're going to wind up in some terrible place where if you pre-order your movie ticket you can see the Target special edition of Avengers Endgame 8 that is only available in theaters for two weeks before it switches to some other version. Maybe we'll get to the point where movie theaters will just perpetually have the same film on roll and update it every couple of months with the latest patches like an MMO. Remember, your Avengers and Superman subscriptions are different. Not sure about the last one, but you could imagine lots of possibilities: - Regional versions of films with anything from chunks of dialog ("I'm from X") up through entire cityscape backgrounds changed depending on the theater location. With CG, even things like character appearance (e.g. race) could be regional. - Brand placement: Top sponsor's products appear in the first two weeks of showings, then second bidder for the next two weeks, etc. - A/B testing different versions of films with live audiences and tweaking. - The opposite of what akersten said: introduce new little easter eggs or features regularly over the course of the film's theater run to encourage repeat ticket buying from the hardcore fans. What else?
- netsharc 7y agoI doubt people could.be convinced to do repeat (say monthly) viewings of a movie. It could spectacularly backfire when the audience say "let's wait until they release version 3 in a few months, after they've patched up the shitty parts the beta viewers didn't like.". Yesterday I saw the headline that in Singapore, a lesbian kiss was deleted from the Skywalker movie, so a version of your idea exists.
- tialaramex 7y agoIt's completely normal for feature films to have cuts for different regions to handle censorship preferences. Consider Leon (released as "The Professional" in the US). Mainland Europe isn't as up tight about the idea that teenage girls crush on older men and so the edit released there includes scenes the US wasn't comfortable with and as a result fleshes out the middle of the film. Unlike that lesbian kiss we're taking about several whole scenes with dialogue which were shot but aren't in the US movie at all. And that's normal. What's special about Cats is that they changed the movie after it "shipped". This is a watershed like when video games started getting day one patches. Super Mario Brothers had no day one patch, it was a physical hunk of metal and plastic, when we played Outer Worlds we set apart an hour the day before for the patches to apply, knowing there would be patches because all games do that now.
- firefoxd 7y agoInteresting that no one has mentioned Sonic the Hedgehog movie. The first trailer came out and everyone thought it was terrible: https://youtu.be/4mW9FE5ILJs https://youtu.be/4mW9FE5ILJs It had to be taken back to the drawing boards, and they pushed back the release date. The new one is much better. This must be the first case of movie trailer A/B test
- unfunco 7y agoI don't think it's the first case, movie studios have used focus groups for a long time.
- tomashubelbauer 7y agoI'm sure the Sonic movie used focus groups as well. The difference is they all seemingly signed off on it and it wasn't until the first trailer dropped and the people's reaction was so negative that they decided to redo it.
- hinkley 7y agoThink I heard the FX team behind Sonic went bankrupt. That’s going to serve as a cautionary tale, if anything.
- ravedave5 7y agowhy speculate when it's so easy to google?
- RandomBacon 7y agoI'm sorry that you're being downvoted. It would be nice if people verified facts they aren't sure of before spreading them and furthering misinformation.
- meddlepal 7y agoFunnily enough a search for "sonic fx team bankrupt" on Google now links to the original comment on HN.
- ctdonath 7y agoRecall that Highlander 2 and Highlander 2: Director’s Cut are practically different movies thanks to significant editing (H2 being so bad that H3 actually apologized and reset the plot line to the end of H1).
- philwelch 7y agoTo be fair you have to pretty heavily retcon at least the implied ending of Highlander 1 to even have a sequel at all.
- ctdonath 7y agoYeah, H3 actually reset storyline to about 10 minutes before the end of H1. (I was trying to be concise.) And by "H3 apologized for H2" I mean the main character literally sat in a chair, looked into the camera, broke the 4th Wall, and in flowery terms apologized for H2.
- heinrichf 7y agoPreviously discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21861294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21861294 , where I also linked to an interesting analysis of a VFX supervisor, and the original Hollywood reporter article
- moomin 7y agoIronically this may actually reduce its long term appeal. The original cut has the making of a cult favourite.
- tjpnz 7y agoThis actually happens quite a bit between the premiere and general release of a film, more so for VFX heavy features. Often the version screened at the premiere and crew screenings will omit shots or be cut with early versions of a shot that's still on the renderwall. Sometimes you also get alternate versions of the end crawl with eulogies for crew members who've died during production. This wasn't possible up until relatively recently; you would have to lock everything down by reel for printing. But given the prevalence of digital projectors and distribution you can go right down to the minute.
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y agoKanye West - The Life of Pablo was changed like 10+ times after release.
- krapp 7y agoAlso, George Lucas or somebody is still messing with the OT. For the Disney+ release of A New Hope, the scene between Greedo and Han Solo now has Greedo say "Maclunkey[0]" before shooting. This is apparently a Huttese insult that means something like "I will end you," and it's supposed to provide moral justification for Han percieving Greedo as an imminent threat and shooting him. This is also apparently in the Dug's dialogue in The Phantom Menace. I forget the thing's name. Also I think the timing of their shots are tweaked so they happen almost simultaneously. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH19gKo7W7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH19gKo7W7w
- noonespecial 7y agoYou don't remember that scene? Oh wait, my copy is Cats v2.0.36, you've still got 2.0.22, just git pull the latest. I can't friggin wait...